Father fails in attempt to stop girlfriend's abortion

The British Court of Appeal turned down an Oxford student's request for an injunction to stop his pregnant former girlfriend from going ahead with a planned abortion. The father's application for a hearing by the House of Lords was then rejected by three law lords. Dyer describes an earlier case, Paton v. British Pregnancy Advisory Service, in which a judge held that a husband had no right to stop his wife from having an abortion. In the current case, however, the Court of Appeal's and law lords' decisions were based on the finding that the fetus was so underdeveloped that it would be unable to breathe either naturally or through a ventilator and was therefore not capable of being born alive. The effect of the Court of Appeals's ruling is to equate the words "capable of being born alive" in the 1929 Infant Life (Preservation) Act with viability, although the meaning of viability has not yet been clearly defined.     

教授对作假行为失查而受处罚

上周 ,英国伦敦帝国大学口腔医学院临床生化系教授ＴｉｍｏｔｈｙＰｅｔｅｒｓ被判定犯有严重的失职罪。他之所以遭到英国国家医学委员会的严厉谴责是因为他指导的一名低年资医师ＡｎｊａｎＢａｎｅｒｊｅｅ发表了一篇捏造的研究报告 ,而他却失于督查和阻止。ＡｎｊａｎＢａｎｅｒｊｅｅ医生现年 4 1岁 ,曾于1988年至 1991年期间在帝国大学医院作低年资医师 ,当时Ｐｅｔｅｒｓ教授是他的科研项目负责人。去年 ,他在《英国医学杂志》(ＢＭＪ 2 0 0 0 ;32 1:14 2 9)上发表了一篇伪造的研究报告 ,经英国国家医学委员会核实 ,认为存在欺骗行为 ,…     

Attenuation of diet-induced atherosclerosis in rabbits with a highly selective 15-lipoxygenase inhibitor lacking significant antioxidant properties

1. 15-Lipoxygenase (15-LO) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis because of its localization in lesions and the many biological activities exhibited by its products. To provide further evidence for a role of 15-LO, the effects of PD 146176 on the development of atherosclerosis in cholesterol-fed rabbits were assessed. This novel drug is a specific inhibitor of the enzyme in vitro and lacks significant non specific antioxidant properties.
2. PD 146176 inhibited rabbit reticulocyte 15-LO through a mixed noncompetitive mode with a K_i of 197 nM. The drug had minimal effects on either copper or 2,2′-azobis(2-amidinopropane)hydrochloride (ABAP) induced oxidation of LDL except at concentrations 2 orders higher than the K_i.
3. Control New Zealand rabbits were fed a high-fat diet containing 0.25% wt./wt. cholesterol; treated animals received inhibitor in this diet (175 mg kg⁻¹, b.i.d.). Plasma concentrations of inhibitor were similar to the estimated K_i (197 nM). During the 12 week study, there were no significant differences in weight gain, haematocrit, plasma total cholesterol concentrations, or distribution of lipoprotein cholesterol.
4. The drug plasma concentrations achieved in vivo did not inhibit low-density lipoprotein (LDL) oxidation in vitro. Furthermore, LDL isolated from PD 146176-treated animals was as susceptible as that from controls to oxidation ex vivo by either copper or ABAP.
5. PD 146176 was very effective in suppressing atherogenesis, especially in the aortic arch where lesion coverage diminished from 15±4 to 0% (P<0.02); esterified cholesterol content was reduced from 2.1±0.7 to 0 μg mg⁻¹ (P<0.02) in this region. Immunostainable lipid-laden macrophages present in aortic intima of control animals were totally absent in the drug-treated group.
6. Results of these studies are consistent with a role for 15-LO in atherogenesis.

     

Development of sun compensation by honeybees: how partially experienced bees estimate the sun's course

Honeybees and some other insects, in learning the sun's course, behave as if they can estimate the sun's position at times of day when they have never seen it, but there are competing ideas about the computational mechanisms underlying this ability. In an approach to this problem, we provided incubator-reared bees with opportunities to fly and see the sun only during the late afternoon. Then, on a cloudy day, we allowed bees to fly for the first time during the morning and early afternoon, and we observed how they oriented their waggle dances to indicate their direction of flight relative to the sun's position. The clouds denied the bees a direct view of celestial orientation cues and thus forced them to estimate the sun's position on the basis of their experience on previous evenings. During the test days, experience-restricted bees behaved during the entire morning as if they expected the sun to be in an approximately stationary position about 180 degrees from the average solar azimuth that they had experienced on previous evenings; then from about local noon onward they used the evening azimuth. This pattern suggests that honeybees are innately informed of the general pattern of solar movement, such that they can generate an internal representation that incorporates spatial and temporal features of the sun's course that they have never directly seen.     

The role of laser wavelength in the treatment of vitreoretinal diseases

Advances in laser technology have provided ophthalmologists with lasers spanning the visible and near-infrared spectrum. Recently, prospective, randomized clinical trials have compared laser wavelengths in the treatment of specific disorders. The Krypton Argon Regression Neovascularization Study found no difference between argon blue-green and krypton red laser when performing panretinal photocoagulation to manage proliferative diabetic retinopathy. The Macular Photocoagulation Study Group and the Canadian Ophthalmology Study Group have independently found no substantial difference in treatment outcome when using argon green versus krypton red laser to treat choroidal neovascularization in eyes with age-related macular degeneration. These recent trials and others that evaluate laser management of proliferative diabetic retinopathy, choroidal neovascularization, retinopathy of prematurity, and retinal breaks are reviewed. Multiple studies have failed to identify a moderate difference in treatment outcome between treatments performed with different laser wavelengths; however, small differences in outcome cannot be excluded without further study involving great numbers of patients. At the present time, ophthalmologists should be reassured that individual preferences for one wavelength over another in specific situations should not have a major effect on the visual outcome of the procedure.     

Do''s and don''t''s of percutaneous nephrostomy

Percutaneous nephrostomy procedures generally are safe. The associated mortality rate is approximately 0.04%, and the incidence of important complications is 5% (2-4). To minimize complications, certain precautions always should be followed. First, radiologists should perform a preprocedural evaluation of the patient, with correction of marked coagulopathy or thrombocytopenia before all but the most emergent procedures. Second, antibiotics should be administered routinely before nephrostomy drainage; the choice of antibiotics can be based on the specific patient's risk factors for bacteriuria. To minimize the risk of clinically important renal vascular damage, radiologists should do the following: 1. Always achieve adequate visualization of the calices. 2. Identify a posterior calix for puncture that will give access to the appropriate segment of the kidney for anticipated procedures and allow safe creation of a tract. 3. Puncture below the 11th rib (and preferably below the 12th rib when feasible). 4. Puncture the tip of a posterior calix from a 20 degrees-30 degrees, posterolateral oblique approach to avoid major blood vessels. 5. Make a single-wall puncture of the calix. 6. Perform exchange transfusion for opacification of the renal pelvis and calices during percutaneous nephrostomy procedures to minimize the risk of sepsis. Overdistention can increase the likelihood of sepsis or retroperitoneal contamination. 7. Inject contrast material via a catheter placed over a wire to confirm the intracollecting system location of the entry. 8. Avoid unnecessary (complicated, prolonged) procedures in an infected, obstructed system. 9. Use only self-retaining drainage catheters to minimize the risk of inadvertent catheter dislodgment. 10. Create large-bore tracts with a balloon dilation system. By contrast, radiologists should not do the following: 1. Puncture above the 11th rib (unless all other avenues of approach have been exhausted). 2. Lose access to an obstructed kidney once the kidney has been punctured. Placement of a "safety" wire for all complex manipulations is recommended. 3. Panic if excessive bleeding or evidence of adjacent organ injury is seen. Excessive bleeding usually can be stopped with tract tamponade by using a balloon catheter advanced through the tract or with placement of an appropriate-sized nephrostomy tube to occlude the tract. If active bleeding continues or recurs, arteriography should be considered. The quantity of bleeding can be monitored with sequential hematocrit measurements. Almost all renal artery injuries can be treated with minimally invasive procedures, such as selective embolization of the branch artery involved, and this will lead to infarction of only a small segment of kidney, with preservation of functioning renal parenchyma. Injury to an adjacent organ usually can be treated nonsurgically (21,23). The most commonly injured extrarenal abdominal organ is the colon (Fig 6). On occasion, a percutaneous nephrostomy needle may traverse the retroperitoneal segment of the colon, and this type of injury generally can be treated nonsurgically, as well (23). If the colon has been traversed, adequate urinary drainage should be ensured before the transcolonic nephrostomy catheter is removed (so that a nephrocolonic fistula is not maintained). This can be done by placing a ureteral stent and a bladder catheter (18). Once adequate urinary drainage is provided, the nephrostomy catheter can be withdrawn into the colon and used as a percutaneous colostomy drain. The percutaneous colostomy tract should be allowed to mature for several days before this catheter is removed. In addition, appropriate antibiotics should be administered from the time a transcolonic tract is identified until the percutaneous tract has healed completely. Transthoracic entry can cause pneumothorax and pleural effusions. These should be treated only if they are large or cause symptoms (21). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)